DMAA

Just watched the highlights and have to say not for the first time against Hibs and Aberdeen in recent season the huge decisions went against us. Their best chance was Olly Shaw who was easily offside and somehow wasn’t flagged, and then a blatant penalty denied with the ref right in front of it. It’s so frustrating after huge decisions cost us at the end of last season against those two.

I think he has a lot of ability and yes you saw flashes of that tonight, but yet again all we really saw was his potential. He underperformed in the key moments and as a fan of his it was disappointing that he’s still not proving his doubters wrong. There was one moment he got in behind and bizarrely rather than running to the byline he ran inside and passed it back to Jack ??‍♂️

I saw someone say they’d prefer McCrorie over Coulibaly because McCrorie would run himself into the ground for Rangers. Well Coulibaly ran himself into the ground and put his body on the line for Rangers tonight. I feel for him because he’s being forced to play in a more advanced role than he’s comfortable with and his pace, strength and energy are great but he’s never going to be a playmaker and you can’t blame him when his pass is overhit or he fails to slice open the defence. It’s not his game.

I think if Arfield hadn’t got injured we may have won. He has that quality in front of goal and far more creativity than McCrorie.

And I don’t know what’s wrong with Grezda. I’ve been a big advocate of him because I think he possesses the quality but he really isn’t performing. You can see he has it in him but he makes poor decisions and loses composure with general slackness. He needs to get it sorted fast.

Yes but that’s not how football works, teams can pull a performance out of the bag, and maybe they were fatigued, but they gave us more chances than almost anyone this season. I forgot about his chance, I agree. Whilst I think most players performed well tonight and we did so much right it’s not a coincidence or bad luck that we didn’t score. There was a lack of composure in front of goal from Morelos, Candeias, Grezda and Tavernier tonight. They all seemed to just put their head down and blast it with their chances (apart from Tav who just buckled). It may be lack of confidence or just not being able to handle pressure or just lack of quality. The top players have nerves of steel and stay cool as ever to slot home when in the position some of these guys were in tonight. Dare I say it, a certain Josh Windass would have definitely put some away. For all his faults he was exceptional at keeping cool when through on goal.

It’s agonising. Yes we dominated and had all the chances but this isn’t last year’s Hibs team. They are 8th for a reason and you could really see that tonight. Some good performances out there but there were some gilt edged chances that should not have been missed. Candeias’ one was the best chance, he just had to place it.

Virtually no added time in the end, absolute crime there was loads of time lost during the game with players down.

Passing in final third is awful again. Better improve soon.

Grezda is one of those wingers who loves to have the ball at his feet and just can’t bring himself to release as early as he should. I thought Barisic had a great crossing opportunity if Grezda laid it to him quicker.

Think McCrorie brings important qualities to the team. On his day Coulibaly can be brilliant though so happy to give Gerrard the benefit of the doubt on that one.

I think this will be he lineup. In the past Gerrard has picked his centre according to the game type and you could argue Worrall might be more suited to this game because he’s far more mobile than McAuley and Hibs aren’t the kind of team who will rain high balls into the box.

When you see the losses we are still (somehow) making it’s clear just how important this cash influx was.

I think the poor form of our rivals (and our success in Europe) has prevented the necessary scrutiny of our poor performance at times this season. At this stage we have it all to prove and have no reason to boast or gloat. We'll have a much better idea of where we stand in 10 days' time. I'm fearful tbh, although I expect a decent result tonight.

Huge boost, but the associated expenditure will obviously take a chunk out of that.

I'm pleasantly surprised with this guy, he looks technically very capable. He certainly looks better in possession than many of our players. He looks more like a centre mid than a right back on the a ball. If he is good enough defensively he could be a very good signing. Only worry is he is 25 and has only 1 cap. You'd hope for more caps for an American Rangers target. Beasley, Reyna and Bocanega were all over 100. Even Bedoya managed 66.

That’s quite a stat, hadn’t realised they had kept that up from last season.

For a change I think we'll only see one change in the line-up and that will be Morelos in for Lafferty. McCrorie and Jack will be required to protect and defence and I can't see Grezda dropping out for Middleton at this stage. Hibs have their pride and will come at us and that should suit us very well because that is the kind of game we do have a good squad for. Looking forward to seeing Barisic and Grezda continuing to form a partnership on the left.

Brilliant way of dealing with it

We're always going to be over-criticised by the media, but what the table proves just now is that Rangers and Celtic are both performing significantly worse than the norms of recent history. If it says anything about our transfer record it's not particularly flattering and we can't escape that, even if it is being overblown.

The point is that Livingston is the perfect place to prove himself because he’s getting first team football in our league. He has no chance of starting ahead of Morelos or Lafferty and he won’t earn a new contract in our reserves.

Agreed, Hardie is in the perfect place right now and there’s no chance he’ll be recalled.

Anyone else getting a blank screen when trying to watch Hamilton full game on rangers tv?

Very impressed with that video of Sol tbh. He clearly has some abilities than Morelos doesn't. Also the fact he's out of contract in the summer makes him much more attractive but also much less likely we'd fork out for him now, he still wouldn't be cheap. On the other hand we're playing 1 up front and if that isn't changing then we should focus our resources on a player who goes straight into the starting line-up.

A lot of common sense there @Gaffer that I think we all agree with. I think @Rousseau and I don't disagree with how we should be playing and what we should be doing as much as whether 4-4-2 can play a part in achieving it. The inside runs is one I've mentioned in connection with 4-4-2 before in that the striker on each side acts as a forward one-two partner for each winger, something that Arfield is normally tasked with because Morelos is often too far away, and sideways one-twos often don't come off. We don't see nearly enough of the winger getting the ball, playing a sharp pass in to the striker's feet and following his pass. The striker should then lay it back and spin off his man, leaving the winger in a very threatening position and the centre in two minds of whether whether to attempt a tackle or stick to his man. Works best with wingers playing on the wrong wing of course because they are running in on their stronger foot.